VGChartz Sales Comparison Charts September 2021 Discussion Thread

[The_Liquid_Laser]

Kyuu said:

The_Liquid_Laser said:

All of the big 3 are strong brands in the US.  (I am saying this as someone who lives in the US.)  However, if I had to rank them, I'd put XBox first and Playstation last.  XB1 sold almost as well as PS4 in the US in spite of XB1 totally botching their launch and PS4 having a lot more exclusives.  It was competitive purely on branding.

Also, as this generations progresses, PS5 will get fewer Japanese titles than Switch.  PS5 will mostly rely on multiplats and a few really big titles (e.g. Final Fantasy), but Switch will get more Japanese titles overall.  Playstation is losing 3rd party support.

Kakadu18 said:

The SNES didn't really dominate it's generation. While it did sell more than the Mega Drive, that one still was very healthy competition.

Worldwide the SNES sold more than all of its competitors combined.  I would call that dominant.  Sure the SNES sales were fairly close to the Genesis in the US, but the PS4 sales were also fairly close to XB1 in the US.  In both cases when the generation ended it was clear who the winner was, and so the next system (N64 and PS5 respectively) were set to sell well out of the gate.  In spite of this both systems have bigger factors that undermine sales after the first 1-2 years.

A winning system that was not dominant would be the Wii.  It sold like hotcakes for a few years, but it did not sell more than all competitors combined.

You said PS5 would be in SERIOUS TROUBLE if Sony didn't release it in 2018/2019 since Switch was going to take all those sweet Japanese 3rd party games starting from 2018. And I recall you predicting PS5 to at best sell 10 million this year, and only thanks to COVID inflating sales. To no one's surprise, both of your predictions proved poor. But did you learn from it? Apparently not.

Playstation's western 3rd party support remains excellent, and there are no signs of that changing whatsoever. Switch is inheriting Vita's support. The kind of Japanese support its getting poses no threat to Playstation 5, which like PS4, will share the majority of those smaller games anyways. You can't really draw any conclusions about PS5's status in Japan yet due to neighboring countries scalping/importing, backwards compatibility, and digital ratios. It does raise an eyebrow that PS4's multiplats are keeping up and sometimes outselling their Switch counterparts despite being a dead platform with small install base, a lot of them are probably being played on PS5 through backwards compatibility.

Switch is inheriting 3DS' 3rd party support as well, but that wasn't a threat to Playstation either. At worst, the loss or decline of those smaller titles on Playstation will affect the hardware sales in Japan, which is an insignificant region to bigger Japanese games, save for Monster Hunter (which in the case of MHW still only sold around 4.4 million in Japan vs 15.6 million and counting for the rest of the world).

Playstation took back Monster Hunter as a multiplat (you'd be naive to think MH is going to become a full Nintendo exclusive again when Rise will end up 5-8 million copies behind World; a steep decline. Capcom isn't that stupid), Dragon Quest returned to Playstation (also as a multiplat) and its next installment is being designed to cater for western audience, because Square Enix realized Japan is too small a market to justify being the sole focus anymore and decided to take risks. Final Fantasy switched from multiplats (skipping Nintendo), to console/timed exclusives on PS4/5. Forspoken, a Japanese AAA game, is also a timed PS5 exclusive that is skipping Switch. Nothing is changing. Elden Ring, Final Fantasy, Resident Evil, Tales of, Ace Combat, leading fighting games... Switch isn't snatching any of them but you keep going and on and on about the disasters Playstation is facing lol. In 2017, you told us to wait for 2018. Now you're telling us to wait a few more years.

Switch is an amazing platform with a decent 3rd part support (excellent for a Nintendo system), but the hyperbole has to stop. What's selling those consoles is Nintendo unrivaled 1st party software, their unified proposition, and hybrid nature. Decent 3rd party support is a nice additive, but it isn't the main selling point, nor is it a threat to Playstation.

When developers/investors think "Playstation", Xbox and mainstream PC are included in the equation since the three are just shy of being one development model. Switch isn't, because the platform is too underpowered and has an outdated portable architecture. The support should weaken as we exit the "CrossGen" period, which is taking unusually long this time due in part to COVID.

Xbox isn't the bigger brand in the US, and the so called "disastrous Xbox One launch" is overstated. The much more supply constrained PS5 is comfortably outselling the Series S/X in the US without any top tier exclusives either. You forgot to tell us that Xbox was notably cheaper than PS4 for the last 2 or 3 years, which helped it somewhat keep pace in its two best countries. Nevertheless, the brand is powerful enough that it does have a real potential to bounce back and beat a worse received Playstation system in the US/UK. If Xbox's exclusive quality and reputation keep climbing, and Playstation's start declining, then obviously, Xbox might be on the top again. Brand power is associated with quality and reputation, I wouldn't separate the two.

Do you have links to these predictions?